The Personality of India: Pre- and Proto-historic Foundation of India and Pakistan c10.86

c10.86

This picture, based on archaeology, provides a sort of physical framework of regionalism. History based on literary sources does not belie this story. Since the Aryans gave us our extant literature, the earliest historical sources belong to them. That story begins with the Aryan settlements in the upper valleys of the Indus basin, and the region immediately to the east called the Brahmavarta in the Rigvedic age. In the Later Vedic period, we begin to see the emergence of small monarchies and States in the western Gangetic basin. About the 6th century B.C., the Buddhist literature finely sums up the political situation in the North by describing the 16 kingdoms or janapadas. Panini for the first time mentions Kalinga in the middle of the 5th century B.C. The kingdoms of the extreme South come to be mentioned only by Kautilya and Asoka. The real unified history of the sub-continent thus begins with the Mauryans who gave political unity to the country, the chief river basins of which were settled by large scale agricultural communities by about the 5th century B.C. Naturally this formative period of Indian history is not very firmly documented and it may be treated as the Proto-historic era of movements.